There are so many things that someone can be in the world, but what if you want to be everything?

“It’s a big decision; you can’t just randomly pick and choose with your eyes closed.” Mrs. Guthry says to me and I grimace as I remember last night when I was doing just that. Taking the book of colleges and closing my eyes, turning the book so that I wasn’t sure which direction it was facing, and randomly opening to a page so that I could put my finger down on some random college, more often than not having it land in between two. “Your grades allow you to choose pretty much any college, but they’ll want to know what your major will be because of your grades. They’ll want you to have a plan.” A plan. Something that hasn’t ever been a part of my life. Live now, get good grades now, make something of yourself. The problem is that I’m not sure what I want to make of myself.

“I know Mrs. Guthry, I’m just not sure what I want to be.” A writer. A doctor. A scientist. An explorer. All of these completely random things keep popping up into my head, what I want to be.

“Okay Mandy, but I want a decision on the top three colleges by Monday morning.” She says as she sigh’s with resignation. I bite my bottom lip and nod my head in agreement before picking up the messenger bag next to my chair and exiting the small office. I hate it in there. It’s too small, too smelly, too dim, too you name it. I walk out into the hall and take a deep breath of fresh air, or remotely fresh air, even if it does still have the stench of school french-fries.

“So what’d she say?” Emily asks me and I glance at her for a moment before raising my eyebrows.

“Do you really have to ask?”

“Nope.”

“Good….”

We start walking towards first period, Calculus. “What if I become a teacher?” I ask her.

“Then you’ll get sucky pay, the summer off so that you can take more courses so you can keep teaching, and probably become fat.” She states matter-of-factly.

“Gee, thanks for the sugar coated version of my new life.” I tell her sarcastically.

“Ohhh, you should become an actor, then you can be all thin and suffering because you don’t have a job so you wont have money to eat and you can wither away and die and it wont be considered suicide because you didn’t actually have the money to get food.” She starts rambling and I just tune her out. I love Emily to death, she’s my best friend, but to be honest the girl’s got some issues. Not that I don’t have my issues, but hers all seem to be with appearance. Weight to be specific. I know that she doesn’t eat much, and that when she does eat she throws it up, but I don’t know what I can do to make her stop. It’s not like telling her that it would be weird without her is going to convince her that she’s fine. Telling her that being a size five isn’t fat, that it’s skinny for a seventeen year old. Its pointless to try and convince her not to do anything stupid like that when I do stupid shit too. After walking for maybe two minutes we reach the auditorium where class is held. Since the teacher who teaches Calculus comes from a college campus nearby she doesn’t have her own room here so she teaches our small class in the auditorium. It actually makes class really interesting not to have a desk.

I plop down in my seat on the fifth row from the front in the very middle. We’re only allowed to sit as far back as the fifth row since there’s only fifteen people in our class. Emily sits next to me and continues jabbering about something but I don’t listen, just stare off into space at the spot on the top of the curtains. I see something move up there, like a flutter, but I’m sure it’s just my imagination as Miss Carton starts lecturing about something, but not math. Then the curtain moves again. Emily is still whispering.

“Did you see that?” I ask her distractedly.

“See what?” she sounds confused.

“Never mind, just going crazy that’s all.” I continue to stare off at the spot where I saw the movement, and vow to go and see what’s up there after class ends.

“Class, pull out your pencil, we’ve got a pop test today, and yes you did hear correctly, a pop TEST. This grade will be counted as twenty percent of your final average for the week.” I take out my pencil and take the sheet that’s passed to me.

“Limits and Continuity: Special Limits” the title of the paper reads.

“1. Determine the limit of the function

F(x) Cos x if x in (-1,2)

At the point x 0.”

I hear Emily huff as she reads the first problem, then see her glance at my paper where I’ve already started solving the problem. The bell rings and Miss Carton takes up the tests.

“I’ve got some stuff to do, I’ll catch up with you at lunch.” I say to Emily and she looks somewhat baffled by my sudden urge to have some alone time. But she nods and I walk over to the stage. Everyone has already shuffled out of the auditorium by the time I reach the steps. I climb up them, and then back into a hallway I didn’t know was there. More stairs and I climb them too before reaching the top and seeing that the catwalk looks empty. I shrug my shoulders and call out. “Hello? Is anyone up here?” I don’t hear anything at all, but the dust seems to float down from the ceiling and I look up at it, only to find it empty as well. I turn around, facing the wall of the stairwell and glance up at the dust layer protecting them. Something moves, but I’m not sure what, because there’s nothing there to move. And then as if someone was using their fingers to write on glass, letters start to appear on the wall, using the dust as the writing tool.

“HELP ME” it says, and I stare at it for a minute, my eyes as big as saucers, before practically tripping down the stairs in my hurry to get out of there. I glance over my shoulder, seeing a girl and I do a one eighty so that I’m facing her.

“Who are you?” I ask.

And she screams so loud that one of my ears starts to bleed. I clamp my hands over my ears and stare at her for a moment before she begins to decompose before my eyes. Her skin turns gray, her hair falls out in large clumps, and her lips dry up and seem to fall off. Then her right eyeball tumbles out of the socket, down her face, and drops to the floor with a slippery sounding thud. All the while she screams, yanking at her nearly gone hair, pulling it out. I run, down the stairs, through the hall, down the stairs, and out of the auditorium.